Secret Warriors, FCBD comics

Things from Free Comic Book Day!

Avengers

FCBD rarely provides anything worth keeping.  This issue keeps the streak going. A superfluous prelude to last week’s Avengers 1, which was already uninteresting enough.  Followed up by a weak Captain America prologue. Yu’s art is fine, but Coates continues to bore in my second sample of his comic book work.

Amazing Spider-Man

So good to see Ryan Ottley on something so soon after Invincible.  He absolutely killed it there, and he looks perfect for Spidey as well.  Colorful rogues gallery, an everyman hero, and plenty of action. And something that I didn’t truly recognize until today, but Ottley has a talent for drawing expression on regular human beings.  His range is phenomenal, and he looks to take advantage of all of this on this title. This is how you do a teaser comic.

That said, I’m not going to pick it up Amazing Spider-Man 1.  The art’s great, but the story so far is no better than fine. Alas.

DC Nation 0

Three short stories, and I’ll go in reverse order:

Justice League: No Justice gets a prelude.  It looks like four JL teams with random characters who interest me not a whit.  Pass.

Brian Michael Bendis writes his second Superman story.  This one center around the newsroom at the Daily Planet.  It doesn’t have the usual Bendis pop. I suspect the art has something to do with it.  He’s a legend, but Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez looks too....I want to say Jerry Ordway?...here.  It doesn’t look as good as his vintage work.

Tom King and Clay Mann create a terrifying Joker appetizer.  I love it, and can’t wait to see what they do with the main course in the Bat/Cat wedding.

Not something you want to see in the mail slot.

I LOLed.

Secret Warriors 20-28

I enjoyed this title an awful lot.  Jonathan Hickman wraps everything up, and in a rare twist, lets the hero monologue to the helpless, tied up villain.  Nick Fury goes on for a full issue in front of Baron Strucker, proving how smart and foresighted he is as he ties up each thread.  There are a lot of threads. Hickman provides the follow through that I’ve found missing in a lot of his other titles. He really thought this one through.  Kudos.

Phobos and Ares really didn’t need to be in Secret Warriors.  I think Hickman had a story he wanted to tell with them, and shoehorned it in here because he had no other place to put it.  I’m not complaining, it’s one of the best parts of the whole run.

I wonder if this had any influence on God of War.

LMDs really let writers retcon whatever the hell they want.  Someone died and you want to bring them back? LMD. Always wanted to shoot Maria Hill in the face?  LMD.

Issue 24 is phenomenal.  Hickman spends the issue on a standard “gathering the members” story, providing just enough detail to make each agent interesting.  With the disbanding of Quake’s unit just an issue earlier, and the previous introduction of Mikel Fury’s Grey Team, it makes sense to show what the other groups are up to.  And it continues Hickman’s established pattern of multiple flashbacks. So I was genuinely shocked when he ends up killing off the entire squad in two pages. He’s as cold as Nick Fury.  Bravo.

This series might go up on the shelf.  

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good (Really good for issue 24)